Miles

by Carriere, Adam Henry

  Lawrence fumbled trying to light a cigarette. He nodded repeatedly until he took his first drag.

  "Good. Then I want everyone to leave, right now."

  The Captain spoke up. "Now, son, you can't..."

  "Yes, I can. It's my house, isn't it?" The Captain nodded his chin once. "Then get them out of here."

  Nicolasha stepped between me and Lawrence, putting his hands on my face. "Little friend. Listen to me," he implored. I took a step backward, out of his reach.

  "Where's my uncle?"

  Lawrence cleared his throat with a deep series of smoker's coughs. I could see the Huns at the door getting restless. "He's taking it very hard." Nicolasha and the Captain withdrew to the unmarked squad car. "We all are." I don't know if Lawrence heard my snort of a reply. He coughed again. "He said he'll be here tomorrow morning."

  I watched the Captain drive away, but forgot to wave. Nicolasha stood where the car had been parked, holding my gloves and waiting in the darkness for the blue flame to subside. In vain.

  "Who's making the arrangements?"

  Lawrence started to regain his composure. "Your uncle asked me to, help make it easier on both of you." One of the immigrant cousins began to walk outside the house. Lawrence waved him back. "If that's OK with you," he added, with a degree of sincerity I couldn't place.

  "It isn't." Everything inside of me was being gobbled up by the blue flames. I felt like I was about start spitting fire from my mouth like a nuclear dragon on a bad day. And my maybe well-meaning lawyer cousin became ground zero for the blast. "I'll to do it myself." I wheeled past him and headed for the side of the house, the secret passageway to my empty backyard. "And get those people out of here. I want to be alone."

  "No problem at all." Lawrence's voice was equally cold and insensitive, and had hurt woven throughout the syllables, as well. I spun around on my heels and glared at him with a pointless hatred. He lowered his head and mumbled an apology before retreating back to the house.

  I gestured for Nicolasha to follow me.

  *

  After waiting for the last door to slam and the final car to drive off, I sunk back into the large wooden lawn chair that faced out from the patio toward the end of the snow-blanketed yard, almost two hundred feet away.

  I felt like Michael Corleone at the end of "The Godfather Part II", cold and alone, incapable of doing anything about my pain except to stare off into some distant space.

  Nicolasha pulled up a wooden stool and sat next to me. A good deal of the white moon radiated brilliantly in the star-studded night sky above us. The yard and the suburban neighborhood surrounding us were utterly silent, except for the supernatural rustle of the icy breeze as it passed through the leafless tree branches that towered like barbed wire over our barren property. I could smell traces of pine being burnt from a local chimney. We sat just beyond the shadow of my empty house made by the moon. My only thoughts stayed with my eyes, which scanned the heavens, looking for that one shimmering star the wise men were said to have followed those many, many years ago.

  "You were very harsh back there, little friend," Nicolasha said gently. I nodded, still playing at Copernicus. "I am trying to understand, however." Waiting for my reply, he held out a hand for me to take, which I declined to, choosing to enjoy a few final moments of lifeless wonderment at the twilight instead. "Would you like me to come inside with you?"

  "I don't want to go in," even if I was freezing to death.

  "You cannot sleep in the snow, tovarisch."

  Our shadowy features gazed at one another. "Alone, or with you?"

  "Even together, my friend."

  I looked away. "I should feel more alone than I do." My voice remained impassive. Nicolasha couldn't see the tears about to fall from my eyes. He stood up in front of me and offered me my gloves. I closed my eyes as I put them on, trying to keep any tears from falling. Strained with an odd sort of fear, I felt myself being pulled up from the chair and into his arms. I slowly relaxed after Nicolasha did not reach downward with his hands, or touch me with his lips. He just held me close to him, leaning his face over my head.

  "I am so sorry, little friend." Nicolasha's voice broke with a terrible snap. "Sweet baby Jesus be with you tonight."

  Only a messianic Russian would say such a thing.

  We cried together. Or, rather, Nicolasha sobbed quietly, for me, for us, for sweet baby Jesus knows what, while I let forth with a heaving, choking, hyperventilating, practically screaming hailstorm of tears that would have been embarrassing in an opera.

  *

  I had just seen Nicolasha off to the train station, having balked at spending the night in my house, before retreating to the timeless sanctuary of warm, sprinkling shower water, with the album Felix's dad had bought me, Shostakovich's unusual and nearly surreal Hamlet Suite, voluminously playing in the background.

  I spent many minutes standing naked from the door of my bathroom, staring down into the dark hallway where Mom and Dad's bedrooms were. I knew a little about Shakespeare's Hamlet (and a few of his other works) thanks to the cool, nearly sadistic baritone reading voice of Mister Granger; whatever tenuous relationship this Suite may have had with the neurotic Danish prince, et al, Soviet artistic sensibilities aside, was quite beyond me. The damned piece sounded like vast, orchestral music for a silent movie comedy. But I was thankful for the distraction provided to me by the crashing, cacophonous potpourri of musical vignettes in this Shostakovich oddity. I particularly enjoyed the allegro Tournament, a vast, classic waltz for those precious twinklings of Stalinist intimacy one might be possessed with. I listened to it twice.

  Mom loved waltzes.

  *

  I sat in a hunter green tartan flannel robe one of my aunts had bought me for Christmas, with a fresh pair of white gym socks on my feet. I tried on the matching shirt and pants that came with the robe when I got out of the shower, but they were unbearably stiff and itchy.

  I had already called the Polish priest at Holy Rosary to ask him to preside over the funeral service, and to reserve the church for that purpose, my parting shot to the Huns, who would no doubt be shivered to their timbers about making such a fateful trip back to the old neighborhood. The Pole was a little terse on the phone, but I imagined he was carrying on like that to hide his dismay at the grim tragedy of it all.

  I was, too, I guess.

  I then called Lawrence's house. I was relieved he picked up the phone instead of Aunt Hilly. I apologized briefly and he accepted with gushing grace, insisting I let him take care of the wake the following night. He wanted to hold it at a client's funeral home, a friend he had gone to the University of Illinois with. I agreed, and apologized again, mostly because Nicolasha had prevailed upon me earlier to do so.

  The professor wasn't home. Neither was Brennan, damn it.

  That left my phone call to Florida.

  I ran my hand through my wet hair, waiting for the other line to be picked up. I was nestled in the corner of our sofa, where the raging fireplace warmed my legs, which were propped up on a bulky hassock placed in front of me. I had brought my Shostakovich record downstairs to listen to again, but hadn't switched it on yet, unlike every single light in every room I could turn on in the house.

  "Happy Holidays."

  "Mrs. Cromwell." I could hear a festive gathering in the background. My mind spun in turmoil, trying to decide whether I bitterly resented the cheer, or desperately wanted to be there. "Is Felix there?"

  "The Hitman! Sure, let me get him." She called for her other son. "I’d spank you for that ‘Mrs. Cromwell’ but I think you might enjoy it!” Could she hear my involuntary smile? “We can't wait for you to land tomorrow!"

  My jaw and eyes closed tightly. I couldn't bring myself to say anything else until Felix took the phone and said 'hello' twice. "Felix?" I was determined to keep myself composed, like I had with the priest and the lawyer, but my voice betrayed everything that was fermenting deep inside of me. Felix yelled for everyone to be quiet. The res
t of his family ignored him.

  "What's the matter, buddy?" I had trouble talking, again. Deep distress flooded into his gentle voice. "You're not coming, are you?"

  "No." That I could say out loud. "I can't." I fought with my heaving chest and short breaths, but lost to the few tears that rolled down my face and rested between my cheek and the receiver.

  "Is it your parents?" The festivities quieted down considerably. Felix sounded furious. I didn't know he even had a temper. "Tell me what they said. Please."

  I refused to speak until I was sure I wouldn't break down in the middle of a sentence. My best friend probably thought I was blowing him off, or trying to think of a really good lie. "My Mom and Dad...they're dead...got killed...by some...by a drunk driver." I covered the mouthpiece with my hand to keep my halting sniffles a private affair. "Last night."

  "Oh my God..." I heard Felix start fumbling with the phone. He took a few seconds before coming back on. I couldn't tell if he was crying, too. His voice sounded completely different, though. "Are you OK? Were you hurt?" I listened as Arlene whispered urgently to Felix, wanting to know what was going on.

  "I wasn't in the car." I ran out of things to say. Felix told his mom in a vicious whisper what little I said. "I have to go."

  "I'm flying up in the morning. So will my family, if they can."

  "You don't have to, Felix." I didn't expect him to say that. I don't know what I expected, aside from bursting out in tears for the three hundredth time that year. I wondered if all these crying sessions meant I was a manic depressive. My voice winnowed down to a squeak. "I'd rather be there with you guys, anyway."

  "I'll be there by lunch." His voice was collected and serious. I knew there and then he'd come, and almost began to feel a flash deep inside of me. "Try and get some sleep now, OK, buddy?" It was almost midnight in Florida.

  "I will," I said, even though we both knew I wouldn't. The fire needed some more logs. "Thanks, Felix." I was too disoriented to wonder why I was thanking my friend for being a part of the most difficult phone call of my life.

  His voice was filled with emotion and pain. "You're my best friend."

  He hung up before I could reply.

  *

  I turned off all of the lights I had just turned on before I began my phone calling.

  I was convinced I would stay up all night to watch the flames in the fireplace run their course, only to turn my attention to the vast, intricate patterns of blackness I would find on the ceiling above me.

  But I didn't. Still wearing my new robe, I huddled myself in one of our hand-woven blankets from Mexico and plunged into a leaden, dreamless sleep well before the logs had extinguished themselves or Hamlet had finished playing.

  * * *

  X I I

  I turn my back.

  There is a world elsewhere.

  Coriolanus

  It was the longest day of my life.

  While I took my morning shower, I presupposed that the wake would go smoothly, as smooth as such events can go, while the funeral itself would be the "hard" part. After all, when Papu Kasza passed on to the great ward organization in the sky, I was devastated by the wake, and assumed the burial would be that much worse. Sure, I was younger and slightly more foolish when that happened, but why would that impact on my assumption?

  Thus did I begin my interminable voyage across the tumbling and uncharted seas of the ritual of death, Roman Catholic-style.

  *

  Uncle Alex and Veronica came over around ten that morning. My Uncle had quite obviously drank himself to sleep only a few hours before, but I was relieved that he hadn't found any other form of pharmaceutical morphine to help him...cope...if inhaling a few bottles of gin falls under that category.

  Veronica suggested we needed to pick out what Mom and Dad were going to wear. I stared at her without comprehending. Was this a party or something? They're dead, missy. I wasn't sure appearances were the most important thing on their minds now. What the hell was she on about?

  "For the wake, baby." Baby? Don't you call me that. My Mom called me that. "We have to decide what clothes to bury them in."

  I thought they were being buried in a coffin.

  Uncle Alex stood uselessly in between us, staring at the family pictures lining the hallway leading to my parent's old bedrooms. Veronica glanced sideways and unhappily at him. "I'll pick out something."

  Fine. Dad was probably in the middle of negotiating with Saint Peter as we spoke.

  She emerged a few minutes later with one of my Mom's best dresses, a blue silk with silver piping, tailor-made to show off her breasts and her antique pearls, an outfit that screamed 'I have more money and more taste than the rest of you whores'. Was there a dress code in the afterlife? "Isn't that a little bit much to be buried in?"

  Veronica shrugged her shoulders, and held out her other selection, Dad's Navy dress whites. I nodded at that choice. Uncle Alex began shaking his head like there were something rolling around inside of his skull.

  "We can't have the caskets open. They told me."

  Veronica turned away. I went into my bathroom and washed my face and hands until I heard them go downstairs.

  *

  A young guy with a black crew cut, maybe a few years older than I was, greeted us in the lobby of the funeral home. Why do funeral homes smell so distasteful, like the doctor's office, or a confession booth? He introduced himself as Roger and shook my hand like an ape. Must be the son of Lawrence's school mate, I thought. He had the hands and shoulders of someone who worked in construction during the summer, and wore a ugly beige suit so badly cut, it had to be a hand-me-down.

  Roger escorted us into a large room in the back of the parlor that was filled, wall-to-wall, aisle-to-aisle, with coffins. Fucking coffins! He cleared his throat and asked us to choose a pair, before running down the portico to answer a ringing phone.

  I gazed out at the showroom of coffins. Choose a pair, huh? Hey, everybody, look! We're shopping for coffins! "What about that one?" I pointed to a sleek, jet black model directly in front of us.

  Veronica shook her head. "It’s too masculine for your mom."

  "Fine." I pointed at a creamy white oblong job next to it. "That one for her."

  Veronica shook her head again, taking a closer look at the white casket. I noticed she was wearing one of Mom's French scarves. "It's still...well, old-fashioned."

  Old-fashioned? "Fine." I walked over to a pair of caskets in the corner that were molded from aluminum alloy. One was silver, and the other was a light gold. "These are modern."

  "Don't you think they seem...cheap?"

  I grabbed at the silver's price tag, hanging from one of the side grips. Fifteen hundred dollars? "They aren't."

  Veronica shook her head yet again, her eyes locked on a casket I could see was made out of ebony. "What about this one?" How many clarinets could you make out of that?

  Uncle Alex beamed back down to Earth and spoke up. "That looks too expensive."

  I exhaled angrily through my teeth. Roger came back into the room and smiled stupidly at me. Jabbing a thumb over my shoulder to indicate the burial box boutique, I snarled, "Which one of these things are popular?"

  Roger hurried over to a rose-colored casket with a metallic finish. "This one is, sir. It's very nice." He said that as if he were pointing out a sunroof on a Jaguar sedan. I stormed over to him and pushed my hand down inside the box, testing the mattress, as it were.

  "It feels like raw springs with a bed sheet over them."

  Roger blushed and looked away from me. "They're all like that, sir." Well, what if they're not dead yet? Hm? Laying there on that lot, they'll come back and haunt us, I was convinced. "But look at these!" Look at these whitewalls! He pointed wildly at the casket's handles, miniature sculptures of Biblical scenes, not unlike the Stations of the Cross.

  *

  The florist was a friend of Mom's. Her hands shook as she leafed through a large binder which contained hundreds of pictures featu
ring different floral arrangements, wreaths, bouquets, and so on. All the ones I really liked were meant for weddings.

  Uncle Alex dropped a hand-blown crystal swan.

  Veronica insisted on examining each of the funeral setting pictures like they were plans for the latest Soviet nuclear submarine. I played with the florist's shaggy Chow, who took a liking to me after I kept feeding him Christmas cookies, which I took from the pocket of my pea coat.

  Breakfast, you see.

  Veronica was torn between a pair of full settings, raised flower pots, church pew decoratives, and wreath. One was mostly purple. The other had a lot of yellow and blue. Uncle Alex liked them both. The florist was delighted. They were both expensive. I reached across the three of them and flipped the page to an even more elaborate full setting, which had been initially rejected because it consisted solely of costly red roses.

  "That's the one. I want these."

  No one argued with me. The Chow tried to follow me out the door. It was beginning to snow again.

  *

  "Are you hungry, baby?"

  I swore, if she called me that again, I would strangle her with Mom's scarf. The back seat of Uncle Alex's rented Ford Granada was uncomfortable. "Yeah, I guess."

  "Alex?" My uncle stared out of his window, evidently counting snowflakes or something. She called his name again before he looked back at her with glazed eyes. "Would you like to stop for lunch?" He nodded. Veronica kept to her driving, rather than fish for any more bad conversation.

  I saw a Greek-owned family restaurant coming up on the right. You know the sort. Open twenty four hours with a huge menu (even though the burgers and breakfast were the only things worth having), complete with a giant, flashing tower that proudly featured the words STEAKS CHOPS COCKTAILS FOUNTAIN, and, of course, FINE FOOD. The only thing missing was EXP WAITRES WANTD on the marquee, but that was because it was HAPY XMAS SEASN.